The present invention relates to vector field tracking of a moving object and, more particularly, to a method of tracking a moving object with a small number (one or two) of vector field sensors attached thereto.
It is known to track the position and orientation of a moving object with respect to a fixed frame of reference, by equipping the moving object with a transmitter that transmits low frequency electromagnetic radiation, placing a receiver in a known and fixed position in the fixed frame of reference, and inferring the continuously changing position and orientation of the object from signals transmitted by the transmitter and received by the receiver. Equivalently, by the principle of reciprocity, the moving object is equipped with a receiver, and a transmitter is placed in a known and fixed position in the fixed frame of reference. Alternatively, the moving object is equipped with a generator that generates a static magnetic field, and a magnetometer is substituted for the receiver. Again, by the principle of reciprocity, the moving object may be equipped with a magnetometer, and a generator of a static magnetic field may be placed in a known and fixed position in the fixed frame of reference. Typically, the transmitter includes three orthogonal magnetic dipole transmitting antennas; the receiver includes three orthogonal magnetic dipole receiving sensors; and the transmitter and the receiver are sufficiently close to each other, and the frequencies of the signals are sufficiently low, that the signals are near field signals. Such orthogonal transmitting antennas also can be used to generate a static magnetic field; the magnetometer in that case typically is a three component vector magnetometer. Representative prior art patents in this field include U.S. Pat. No. 3,868,565, U.S. Pat. No. 3,983,474, U.S. Pat. No. 4,017,858 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,742,356, to Kuipers; U.S. Pat. No. 4,054,881, U.S. Pat. No. 4,314,251 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,346,384, to Raab; U.S. Pat. No. 4,287,809 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,394,831, to Egli et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,328,548, to Crow et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,396,885, to Constant; U.S. Pat. No. 4,613,866 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,849,692, to Blood; U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,794 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,072, to Jones; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,646,525, to Gilboa.
For the most part, these patents assume point dipole transmitters/generators and, in the electromagnetic embodiments, point dipole receivers. Jones (U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,794 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,307,072) and Egli et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,394,831) discuss multipole corrections to the basic point dipole model. Blood (U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,330), Acker et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,513) and Ben-Haim et al. (WO 96/05768) also treat spatially extended transmitters/receivers.
Also, for the most part, the prior art in this field requires a simultaneous determination of both the position and the orientation of the moving object. Acker, in U.S. Pat. No. 5,729,129, shows how the theoretical expressions describing the fields produced by point dipoles can be used to solve for the position and orientation of the moving object, given any combination of point dipole transmitters and point dipole receivers that provide enough equations to solve for all six unknowns (three position coordinates and three orientation angles). Similar theoretical expressions for the fields produced by spatially extended generators and transmitters can be obtained based on Ampere""s law (Blood, U.S. Pat. No. 5,600,330) or the Biot-Savart law (Gilboa et al., EP 922,966). Blood also shows how the position alone of the object can be obtained, without also computing the orientation of the object, in the case of three magnetic field generators and a three-component magnetometer. Gilboa et al., EP 922,966, provide expressions for the three position coordinates and the three orientation angles of a three component receiver in terms of signals received from three spatially extended transmitters.
There are circumstances in which the restricted space, in which the moving object moves, imposes the constraint that the moving object can be equipped with only one transmitter component or only one receiver component. For example, a borehole logging tool must be slender enough to move through a borehole, and a catheter must be slender enough to move through a blood vessel. In both these cases, there is room in the object for only one transmitter or receiver coil, aligned with the longitudinal axis of the object. Rorden et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 4,710,708), Bladen et al. (WO 94/04938), Dumoulin et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,377,678) and Schneider (U.S. Pat. No. 6,073,043) all show how to derive the combined position and orientation of the object from signals transmitted by a single component transmitter on board the object or from signals received by a single component receiver on board the object. Bladen et al. are of particular note as showing, in the case of point dipole transmitters and a single component receiver, how an imprecise estimate of the object""s position can be calculated independently of the object""s orientation; this imprecise estimate then is used as an initial position estimate in an iterative combined calculation of both position and orientation. Nevertheless, the prior art does not teach how the exact position of a single-component receiver can be obtained without also computing the orientation of the receiver. Furthermore, even in the case of a three component receiver and a three component transmitter, algorithms such as Blood""s for determining only the position of the receiver presuppose the availability of theoretical expressions for the fields generated by the transmitters.
According to the present invention there is provided a method of tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including the steps of: (a) providing the object with at least one vector field component sensor for measuring a respective component of a vector field; (b) for each at least one vector field component sensor, empirically determining parameters of a set of equations that relate the respective component only to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) providing a plurality of vector field generators for generating respective instances of the vector field, each generator having a fixed respective position in the reference frame; (d) for each generator: (i) generating the respective instance of the vector field, and (i) for each at least one sensor, measuring the respective component of the respective instance of the vector field; and (e) solving the set of equations for the position of the object.
According to the present invention there is provided a method of tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including the steps of: (a) providing the object with at most two vector field component sensors for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) for each at most two vector field component sensors, determining parameters of a set of equations that relate the respective component only to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) providing at least three vector field generators for generating respective instances of the vector field, each generator having a fixed respective position in the reference frame; (d) for each generator: (i) generating the respective instance of the vector field, and (i) for each at most two sensors, measuring the respective component of the respective instance of the vector field; and (e) solving the set of equations for the position of the object.
According to the present invention there is provided a system for tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including: (a) at least one vector field component sensor, associated with the object, for measuring a respective component of a vector field; (b) a processor for solving a set of equations that relate, for each at least one sensor, the respective component of the vector field only to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) a memory for storing empirically determined parameters of the equations; and (d) a plurality of vector field generators, having fixed respective positions in the reference frame, for generating respective instances of the vector field.
According to the present invention there is provided a system for tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including: (a) at most two vector field component sensors, associated with the object, for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) a processor for solving a set of equations that relate, for each sensor, the respective component of the vector field only to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) a memory for storing parameters of the equations; and (d) at least three vector field generators, having fixed respective positions in the reference frame, for generating respective instances of the vector field.
According to the present invention there is provided a guide wire, including:
(a) a substantially helical distal portion including at least one electrically conducting section; and (b) a substantially helical, electrically insulating medial portion in tandem with the distal portion.
According to the present invention there is provided a method of tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including the steps of: (a) providing the object with at least one vector field component sensor for measuring a respective component of a vector field; (b) empirically determining a rotationally invariant operator that relates the at least one respective component to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) providing a plurality of vector field generators for generating respective instances of the vector field, each generator having a fixed respective position in the reference frame; (d) for each generator: (i) generating the respective instance of the vector field, and (i) for each at least one sensor, measuring the respective component of the respective instance of the vector field; and (e) computing the position of the object, using the operator.
According to the present invention there is provided a method of tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including the steps of: (a) providing the object with at most two vector field component sensors for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) determining a rotationally invariant operator that relates the at most two respective components to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) providing at least three vector field generators for generating respective instances of the vector field, each generator having a fixed respective position in the reference frame; (d) for each generator: (i) generating the respective instance of the vector field, and (i) for each at most two sensors, measuring the respective component of the respective instance of the vector field; and (e) computing the position of the object, using the operator.
According to the present invention there is provided a system for tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including: (a) at least one vector field component sensor, associated with the object, for measuring a respective component of a vector field; (b) a memory for storing an empirically determined, rotationally invariant operator that relates the at least one respective component of the vector field to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) a processor for computing the position, using the operator; and (d) a plurality of vector field generators, having fixed respective positions in the reference frame, for generating respective instances of the vector field.
According to the present invention there is provided a system for tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including: (a) at most two vector field component sensors, associated with the object, for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) a memory for storing a rotationally invariant operator that relates the at most two respective components of the vector field to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame; (c) a processor for computing the position, using the operator; and (d) at least three vector field generators, having fixed respective positions in the reference frame, for generating respective instances of the vector field.
According to the present invention there is provided a method of tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including the steps of: (a) providing the object with at most two vector field component sensors for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) for each at most two vector field component sensors, determining parameters of a set of equations that relate the respective component to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame, independent of an orientation of the object; (c) providing at least three vector field generators for generating respective instances of the vector field, each generator having a fixed respective position in the reference frame; (d) for each generator: (i) generating the respective instance of the vector field, and (i) for each at most two sensors, measuring the respective component of the respective instance of the vector field; and (e) solving the set of equations for the position of the object.
According to the present invention there is provided a system for tracking an object that moves in three dimensions, including: (a) at most two vector field component sensors, associated with the object, for measuring respective components of a vector field; (b) a processor for solving a set of equations that relate, for each sensor, the respective component of the vector field to a position of the object with respect to a reference frame, independent of an orientation of the object; (c) a memory for storing parameters of the equations; and (d) at least three vector field generators, having fixed respective positions in the reference frame, for generating respective instances of the vector field.
The vector field of the present invention may be any suitable vector field, for example, an elastic force field. Nevertheless, the present invention is directed primarily at the use of static magnetic fields and quasistatic electromagnetic fields, and the examples presented herein all are static magnetic fields or quasistatic electromagnetic fields. The term xe2x80x9cmagnetic fieldxe2x80x9d as used herein encompasses both a static (DC) magnetic field and the magnetic component of a time varying, preferably quasistatic, electromagnetic field. In the case of a quasistatic magnetic field, the sensor preferably is based on at least one loop of an electrical conductor, for example, a coil of electrically conducting wire. In the case of a static magnetic field, the sensor preferably is a single component magnetometer, based, for example, on a generally planar magnetically sensitive film, such as a magneto-resistive film or a Hall effect sensing film, as described in WO 95/09562. Other suitable magnetometers include magneto-optical sensors, flux gate magnetometers and Hall effect diodes.
The present invention is based on the discovery that the responses of a single magnetic field component sensor to a suitable set of independent generators of a static or quasistatic magnetic field can be formulated in a set of equations in which the positional coordinates of the sensor appear but in which the orientational angles of the sensor do not appear. Thus, these equations relate the component of the respective fields, generated by the generators, that is measured by the sensor only to the position of the sensor and not to the orientation of the sensor. In general, the generators include radiators of respective instances of the vector field. These radiators may be spatially extended. In the present context, a xe2x80x9cspatially extendedxe2x80x9d radiator is a radiator that is too large relative to the sensor, and/or too close to the sensor, to be treated as a point radiator. In particular, a xe2x80x9cspatially extendedxe2x80x9d radiator is a radiator that is too large relative to the sensor, and/or too close to the sensor, to be treated as a point dipole radiator. In the usual case of the vector field being a static or quasistatic magnetic field, each radiator preferably includes one or more loops of an electrical conductor.
The equations are formulated in terms of certain parameters. If three or more sensors are used, then the parameters are determined empirically. If only one or two sensors are used, then the parameters are determined either theoretically or experimentally. If two sensors are used, then at least three generators are used. If only one sensor is used, then at least five generators are used.
Optionally, after the position of the object is determined, the orientation of the object is determined too.
As will be readily understood by those skilled in the art, the equations of the present invention are mathematically equivalent to a rotationally invariant operator that relates the field component(s) measured by the sensor(s) to the position of the object.
The scope of the present invention also includes a system for implementing the method of the present invention. The system includes one or more vector field sensors associated with the object, a suitable number of vector field generators, a memory for storing the parameters of the equations, and a processor for solving the equations.
In one embodiment of the system of the present invention, the one or more vector field sensors are tandem sections of the distal portion of a guide wire. Specifically, the guide wire is configured as a helical coil of electrically conducting and insulating materials. The vector field sensors are electrically conducting sections of the coil. If there are two or more vector field sensors, successive vector field sensors are separated by electrically insulating sections of the coil. The remainder of the coil includes an electrically insulating medial portion and an electrically conducting proximal portion.
The helical coil defines an axial channel. A respective first electrically conducting wire is electrically coupled to a distal end of each vector field sensor. A respective second electrically conducting wire is electrically coupled to a proximal end of each vector field sensor. The electrically conducting wires extend through the axial channel, substantially parallel to the channel axis.
In another embodiment of the system of the present invention, two vector field sensors are mounted in the distal portion of a guide wire. One of the vector field sensors is parallel to the longitudinal axis of the guide wire. The other vector field sensor is perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the guide wire.